PROJECT TYPE: Fabrication
CLIENT AND AUTHORS: MOS Architects
LOCATION: Fabricated at Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, USA
DATE: Spring 2014
MATERIAL: Cast polyurethane resin, milled aluminum, pigments, volcanic rock and ash
TECHNIQUE: CNC milling, mold making, casting
DIMENSIONS: 1200 blocks of various common brick sizes
EXHIBITED: Arsenale, Venice Architecture Biennale 2014, Venice, IT
Design and authorship: MOS Architects and Lucia Allais, Princeton University
Fabrication: Benediktas Burdulis and Emil Roman Froege
Souvenir Pile is a reconstitution of materials discovered in the House of Sallust at Pompeii, which was founded in the 4th century BC, built in 15o BC, uncovered in 1780, excavated in the 1800s, bombed in WW2, and rebuilt in the 1870s. This cycle of preservation informs the concept and materiality of the installation. Each polyurethane resin block is part of a larger masonry system, with embedded materials that act as substitutes for one of the 16 materials that once made up the House of Sallust, used in proportion to its total composition. Visitors were allowed to remove one block and take it home as a souvenir, causing the installation to disappear over the course of the Biennale. Only the aluminum baseplates remain, as the bricks have dispersed to thousands of places worldwide.